


Roll the Dice

by wickersnap



Series: Of the things I have to tell you [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Las Vegas Wedding, Multi, NO character death occurs on screen!!!!, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, References to Depression, Space Vegas Wedding, Spacer au, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, brief non graphic references to suicidal thoughts, references to death, spacer anakin & rex, unexpected child acquisition, v brief, via Order 66
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27111661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap
Summary: Words that fall between the jump to hyperspace and the knock on the door.
Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, past Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Of the things I have to tell you [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899607
Comments: 11
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Optional short playlists from my own playlists that were big moods for this fic will be in chapter notes!  
> For example, the general vibe:  
> [the halocline - hippo campus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXaliwag57o)  
> [world gone mad - bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TkmjZCcJSI)  
> [at world's end - blackchords](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv5jziU8ltA)  
> 

There are footsteps behind him on the landing ramp of the ship. They’re light, slow. Not a brother’s boots. Possibly, never again. Light, slow, small. Slightly unsteady. They stop near the entrance to the cockpit.

Jesse keeps his eyes on the dash. Switches flick beneath his fingers as he goes through the motions of pre-flight prep like he’s moving through treacle, as if he’s delaying the inevitable shattering of this heavy, delicate moment. The engines whir through the bulkhead to buffet the silence.

The footsteps move again, and the owner in her pale cloak slips into the pilot’s seat behind him. Her hood slips back and she stares grimly out of the viewport before turning to him, raising a wobbly smile, and visibly trying to keep from crying any more.

“Where to, Ahsoka?” he asks her softly. Even he can no longer trust his voice not to break.

_Commander Tiny._

_Our Huntress._

_Ahsoka._

_Commander Tano, Traitor to the Galactic Republic._

She inclines her head, and Jesse doesn’t need her Force powers to know how she’s feeling. 

“I don’t suppose there’s anyone out looking for us?” she sighs. 

He can’t lie to her, but he does spare her a smile. “Well, wherever we do end up, Tiny, know that I’m following you.”

She sits back and stares again at the desolation in front of them. “I heard,” she says, “that we have a brother unaccounted for.”

Jesse’s breath catches in his throat.

“What say you, Commander—” and even without the distraction of blistering hope he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to complain about another promotion, not now, not with all the have looming just behind them, “—that we bring him home?”

Jesse’s throat constricts around the words before he can get them out. He nearly chokes, has to take a watery-eyed moment to relax his shoulders and breathe, but once he does he looks up at her and knows that this is the kind of woman he’d run to the ends of the galaxy with and never look back.

“Thank you,” he says, barely a breath, a prayer.

“No one gets left behind,” she nods. _“Especially_ not our own.”

Jesse flicks control over to her and she takes up the steering rig. She’ll take them into atmo, up into the void of endless hostilities they’ll bare their teeth and snarl at with no thoughts of surrender. She’ll take them as far as they need to go, he knows, to find what they’re looking for. Who.

Whatever happened, they’ll know it by the end, and that’s enough for him.

He watches the view while they rise through the clouds more smoothly than Skywalker ever allowed them, and hopes beyond all hope that there’s someone out there, waiting to bring them home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some music for you all:  
> [make my bed - king princess](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTuJYwrygSg)  
> [when I watch the world burn - bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPVUf8bN2Dc)  
> [run - harrison storm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1FubEKv0U)  
> [the world is mine - samm henshaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltcW6kviX6o)  
> [play god - sam fender](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L12ORqw6R7A)  
> [5AM - amber run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qge9mS3umFk)

By the time they make planetfall, both of them are as alert and ready as they’ve ever been. Rex is quietly grateful for it, listening to his General—former General now, he supposes—gently direct him towards one of the grimier, less reputable spaceports. Not that  _ anything _ is reputable, not on this planet.

It’s a relief that the long hyperspace jump was more than enough for him to sleep off the fatigue and the headache. He can think clearly now, actually take a proper assessment of himself and the ship and the port they’re coming in to land in. Seemingly it’s been a similar balm for Anakin’s Force exhaustion (though not fully) as he’s awake and aware and looking a little less like death; his normal exhaustion, layered on like oil, has yet to abate. 

Rex can empathise, because stars, what the hell have they  _ done? _

But it’s not the time to ponder it, not yet, not while they’re climbing unsteadily from the cockpit on weak knees and grappling each other by the shoulders for support. Anakin immediately sets to checking the ship over while Rex sees to Artoo. They have fuel enough for a return trip to Coruscant, minimal carbon scoring and several Temple-quality mods. Rex barely has time to blink before he’s found a suitable buyer for them, and then a bag of credits is being pushed into his hands and they’re hurrying out into the darkness of lower New Vertica to lose themselves in the crowds and pollution and evening darkness.

“Are you all right?” Anakin asks minutes later. His hand is warm in Rex’s, his grip tight and anxious and hidden within the folds of their cloaks. Rex can’t see much of his face between their raised hoods, but he squeezes his fingers and pulls him gently into his side.

_ “I’m _ fine,” he says quietly. “I’m more worried about you.”

“I’m fine too,” Anakin replies stubbornly. Out in front, parting the shuffling clamour of bodies, Artoo swivels his head and levels them with his best unimpressed look. Whatever he whistles has Anakin scoffing and making a rude hand gesture in return, but he says nothing. Rex makes a note to start learning binary. He probably has the time now.

There’s a flickering green neon sign up ahead. The only reason Rex pays it any notice is because it’s not the purple or red of the clubs and brothels, but a small, half-hidden, droid-run hostel tucked in the back of a surprisingly clean alley. He nudges Anakin and tips his attention in its direction.

“Perfect,” Anakin murmurs. “Good spot.”

Artoo trills and sets off at a pace, dodging between legs and tails and trailing limbs and threatening a hissing rib-cat with his electroprod. Rex nearly cracks a smile at the sight, though it’s overruled by concern and wariness and a complete inability to let his guard down even a fraction.

Any time spent Nar Shaddaa is practically suicide in some circles, after all.

The lobby of the hostel is barren, prefabricated. One wall has a check-in screen and a small maintenance shaft exit for droids, but the rest of the room is grey and plas-slick and coated with yellow layers of pollutant. There’s not even a camera on the ceiling.

Anakin swipes deft fingers over the screen like he knows the menus by heart. A small collection tray tips out and he drops a number of credit chits into it, wincing at their loud clatter and waiting with the patience of the exhausted for the machine validate them and return a battered key card. Rex takes it and runs his thumb over its buckled corners, already moving to the door that opens into a repulsorlift from helheim. He and Anakin fit neatly into the back, having only to press themselves slightly against the walls to make space for Artoo, and with a scan of the card the lift shudders into motion and takes them up three levels into a short corridor of few doors, the last of which marked with a dorn as it was displayed on the screen downstairs.

The door beeps as it opens, revealing a room that is only just nicer than what they’ve seen up until now. The furniture is sparse, a table and plasform stool and a bed that’s little more than a mattress on a few palettes, all under one gritty window with a broken lever handle—not that they’d want to open it, if the vents in here and the adjoined refresher are in fact their only source of relatively clean air. Rex sighs, world weary, and walks forward to shuck his unfamiliar cloak and dump his satchel at the foot of the bed.

“You do take me to all the best places, darling,” Anakin says in a poor imitation of Obi-Wan as he closes the door behind them. His voice, tired though it is, curls with amusement, and strong arms soon wrap around Rex’s middle. Anakin is a warm weight on his back, his forehead pressed between the ridges of spine down Rex’s neck. Somehow, it helps him breathe easier just to feel him there.

“I do my best,” he replies, sliding a hand over the soft wool of robe sleeves.

Artoo beeps and trundles over to the charging point hidden in the corner. Anakin murmurs something against Rex too muffled for him to parse, though Artoo seems to hear anyway and whistles a goodnight before powering down to standby. Rex turns in Anakin’s hold and begins pushing layers from his shoulders, fumbling them onto the nearby table, more than concerned by the dazed and unfocused look in his eyes. He grabs a handful of medical supplies while Anakin detaches his malfunctioning arm and then nerfherds him into the box ’fresher. 

It’s another prefab, barely big enough for Rex alone to be comfortable in, but he ducks into the shower and fiddles with the controls until the water (clean, shockingly) begins to run hot. He manhandles Anakin, fully undressed, beneath the spray and steps out to strip off his own sweat-stale blacks. It seems that his Jedi is at least okay enough to wash himself, not that they have any soap with them, and Rex tears the first plasfilm corner of a bacta packet when he steps out, drying his feet on a discarded tunic.

“Sit,” Rex tells him quietly, and settles on the cold vinyl floor when Anakin takes the top of the toilet seat. Rex sets to picking out tiny shards of debris lodged in the skin of his soles and smearing the abrasions with bacta, wrapping each one in turn. There are fewer wounds anywhere else, just a couple of light burns on Anakin’s hands and over his chest for which he waves away any bandages Rex tries to wrap on him.

“It’s a waste,” he says, smile soft and far away. “Go, have your shower. I’ll wait for you outside.”

The water is weak but hot, and Rex ends up having to swipe away most of the water that clings to his skin by hand, using his old shirt sparingly for the emblem of the Republic that glares tauntingly up at him from its fabric. The air of the room is cool against him when he steps out and he shivers hard, though he’s much less perturbed by that than the still, shadowed figure curled atop the sheets of the bed.

Anakin is still naked where he lies staring unseeingly at the wall. He barely stirs when Rex lowers himself to the dodgy mattress at his back and threads fingers through his wet hair, and Rex can only imagine the things likely to be running through his mind.

He’s grateful he hasn’t had the time to stop and think so far. Unlike Anakin, he doesn’t know where he’d start, if he’d ever kriffing  _ stop, _ and the thought of that happening when they’re moments from death at any point… It’s enough to scare him into action, at least.s. 

“Anakin,” he says, keeping his voice low. He slides his damp hand to an ice-cold shoulder and squeezes, gently. “Cyare.”

Anakin rolls over until he can bury his nose in Rex’s thigh and let out a thin whine, his good hand drifting up to trace one of Rex’s knees with icy fingers.

“Rex,” he says, broken, plaintive.  _ “Rex.” _

Rex continues to stroke through his hair. “Hey, I’m here.”

He tilts his mouth up to meet Rex’s skin and whimpers with it. 

“Please, get me out of my head.”

There isn’t much in the way of luxury out here in the back-end of this rubbish dump. The blankets are scratchy, likely only the bare minimum of what could be regarded ‘clean,’ and are shoved right down to the foot of the bed as Rex slants their mouths together in a searing demand for attention. The room isn’t warm in any sense, rather chilling their damp skin ignored in favour of soft lips and hot mouths and the press of hips just so when he lies Anakin back against the pillows. Anakin groans into it, his hand flying to grip the back of Rex’s neck and haul him closer,  _ closer, _ as close as he can get him without devouring him whole. His fingers splay down Rex’s neck and Rex shivers, caught, already hitching one strong leg over his waist to fit into the cradle it leaves open in Anakin’s hips. 

He gets his mouth on the skin under Anakin’s jaw and mouths there until he remembers his teeth and  _ bites, _ not hard, but not soft, just sharp and pointed in a way that makes his Jetii whimper and pull him closer with his thighs. Rex moves down the column of pretty tan skin beneath his ear, curls just brushing his shoulders and thick enough for Rex to bury his nose in if he leans just a bit farther forward. He laves his tongue over every nip, sucks at the skin until he’s confident there’ll be a little railroad of bruises leading down towards Anakin’s chest in the morning. 

Fingers dig into Rex’s shoulder blades when he rocks their hips together, gentle. He trails one hand down Anakin’s sensitive side to make him squirm and whine and takes the other, now redundant on his thigh, to fist in his hair. Anakin pulls him again with his leg in an attempt to crush them together and Rex obliges, sliding their cocks together as their bodies loosen in anticipation.

“Are you okay to turn over for me baby?” he murmurs into Anakin’s shoulder. He gets a groan and a loosening of Anakin’s hold in response, both legs falling back to the mattress beneath Rex to allow him the space to move around. 

Rex helps him up onto his knees, finding his balance and a comfortable angle for him to press his face to the sheets, before plastering himself flush to that expanse of freckled back and trailing hands down ribs and sides. Anakin sighs after the paths of Rex’s caresses and open kisses across the backs of hot shoulders. It’s like there's some kind of force that draws Rex down that stretch of skin and scar, following the arch of spine and darting his tongue from mole to freckle to birthmark with awe. His wrist meets the bobbing head of Anakin’s fully hard cock and he takes it in hand, slowly stroking him, coaxing out tiny huffs of breath that flutter in the damp strands of his hair. His other hand sneaks down the backs of Anakin’s thighs and strokes the soft skin there until an idea surfaces between them.

“I’ll be right back,” he assures, patting his boyfriend’s hip. “Stay here.”

In the bathroom is the open sachet of bacta, still half-full and only going to go to a crusty waste if they don’t find a use for it before it dries up. Rex snags it and his blacks, now useless, bringing them back to where Anakin is waiting just as he’d left him. His displaying to the locked bedroom door is a vulnerability that Rex only belatedly realises he shouldn’t have left him with, though he doesn’t seem to have noticed, eyes closed and hand working leisurely between his legs.

Rex climbs back onto the bed and lays the blacks down over the sheets beneath them, curling over his back to murmur a quick, “Jat’ad,” in his ear. Anakin’s shiver spurs him on in his cataloguing of every inch of his body, pulling those pretty fingers away to allow Rex to rearrange him how he needs.

“Can you be good for me, Ani?” he asks lowly. Anakin makes a low noise and nods his head. “Hmm, good boy. I need you to keep these closed for me, okay?” With a tap to the outsides of Anakin’s thighs Rex reaches for the bacta, smearing it over the backs of his legs just under the crease of his arse. Anakin makes a small noise of approval—Rex takes it as permission to slick up his cock and line himself up along the cleft they’ve created.

“Is this okay?”

Anakin nods again and grinds back into Rex. Rex hisses and takes him by the neck, holding him still against the mattress.

“I’m going to need you to say it, cyare.”

_ “Please,” _ Anakin whines. It’s barely a sound between his lips. “Please, Rex, I want it.”   
“Good boy,” Rex breathes. His fingers slip from the back of his neck to tangle in his damp hair. 

Leaning up on his knees and with the other hand steadying Anakin’s hip, Rex pushes in between his thighs, slipping through the coating of bacta and sighing with relief as the throb of his cock is eased between sweet, taut muscles. He slides up beneath Anakin’s cock on a long stroke, dragging back and thrusting forward with building confidence. Anakin whines and tenses around him in a wordless plea; Rex takes his hips in both hands and uses the leverage to speed up his thrusts, angling right up under the hot shaft begging for attention.

The pleasure is hot, sharp, and the view is exquisite. Face in his folded arm, arse in the air, Anakin’s spine curves beautifully between Rex and the bed, shuddering with each impact of Rex’s hips against his own and flexing with every thrust Anakin nigh throws himself back on. Rex nearly loses himself in the bliss of it all, in each ridge and plane and jolt that elicits low moans from the both of them, nearly forgets where they are and what they’re doing altogether but for the pitch of Anakin’s whines and the tight squeeze of his thighs.

“Rex,” he pants, his fingers flexing in the sheets bunched by his head. “Please, touch me.”

Rex reaches around and curls his fingers over Anakin’s leaking cock immediately, tugging him off as best he can while he fucks in harder—slower, more deliberate strokes in contrast to the quick pace of their hips. The coiling in his gut flares hot and tight and he  _ aches, _ grunts where he can’t quite crush his face against Anakin’s skin so bites him there instead.

Anakin whines and yelps out a high moan and Rex nearly bites through his lip, one thrust too many that snaps all the tension he didn’t know he was carrying. He comes over Anakin’s thighs and the fingers he still has wrapped around his cock, spurring his fist into half-conscious and frantic motion until his boyfriend keens loudly and goes limp, more streaks of white splattering across them both.

There’s a moment short of breath, a moment to lean on each other before Anakin slumps onto his side. Rex’s knees nearly give out and tumble him into the mess they’ve made on the towel but he catches himself, air knocked from his lungs, and lowers himself carefully around Anakin’s back. He reaches for the blacks, uses their clean corners to wipe them both over, and tosses them in an untidy bunch in the general direction of the laundry bin before sliding his arm to rest firm around the waist nestled so neatly into the curve of Rex’s own. The kisses he flutters over the tops of Anakin’s shoulders draw another shiver out of him and then he’s twisting around to catch Rex’s lips with his own, warm and languid and gorgeous, and… 

Really, what does the evil of the world outside this room matter? 

_ Not now, _ he pleads. Not while he still has this.

* * *

Breakfast rations have been a battlefield staple since Rex’s deployment. He’s nothing against it, except for the disappointment of having to chew through bland dust once again, but it seems that Anakin is determined to keep them for emergencies only.

It’s a good contingency plan to have.

Braving the streets of the city in daylight is almost no different to the early nighttime bustle; the skies are dark with pollution and shanty constructions hanging suspended between the spacescrapers, the people are no more or less sociable than when they arrived, and the only thing that really seems to have changed is the number of rag-draped forms bundled up at the edges of the streets. A passing barge overspills over the end of a nearby alley, cascading a few dozen kilos of rubbish into the darkness, protested by squawking shouts and clamours. The shrieks of illegal speeder mods are almost enough to set Rex’s teeth on edge.

“All right?” Anakin asks when he catches Rex fidgeting. He’s bartered the grumbling stallholder into what Rex hopes is a good deal for surprisingly good-looking street food and packaged snacks, and hands him one of two portions.

“Fine,” Rex replies, tugging again at the hem of the plain shirt beneath his cloak. “Just not used to civvies.”

Anakin nods and smiles wryly. “Didn’t believe I’d ever retire my robes after Obi-Wan first handed them to me. Thought I’d live and die in them.”

Rex doesn’t know whether to laugh or reach out and cling.

“I know the feeling.”

They find a place selling cheap comlinks to replace theirs broken and lost. Anakin fusses over specs while Rex sifts through a crate of second-hand, second-rate datapads. The one thing Nar Shaddaa seems to have going for it as a city planet is its holonet coverage, so when he finds a couple that work he immediately sets to checking over their applications and functionality. The browser loads much more quickly than expected—he almost drops the fucking thing out of sheer shock.

The funeral is front page news.

* * *

It’s been three days since they’ve been outside. Artoo has stopped trying to bother them into getting up. He himself is mourning in his little corner, photoreceptors dark and noises morose. At least, Rex thinks that’s what he’s doing. He doesn’t really know.

Thoughts come in fits and starts to where he lies listless on their bed. Sometimes it’s a spew of garbled, half-formed sorrows he only somewhat knows the meanings of when he hasn’t the energy to form coherent words in his own head. Sometimes it’s a drifting word to trip over, stumbling into aimlessness while his mind falls further and further from reach. A single thought that rings in his head, unmovable and insurmountable. He studies the sheets and remembers how it felt to take Anakin over them, in them, and feels instantly guilty for the whole endeavour—he shouldn’t, it had been necessary, Anakin had needed it and honestly so had he, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling sick to his stomach for having had the gall to feel anything other than emptiness and an intense, all-consuming  _ hurt. _

Padmé, their Padmé, lost to them forever in an attack they should have prevented. If only they’d gone sooner, had gone before they’d gone to help Windu, had done literally anything different—

Their shiny. Their cadet. Their  _ baby, _ lost to them before they had even entered the world.

It’s funny, though, that with the way things are going, it was probably the kinder fate.

The moment the words grace just the edge of his thoughts Rex’s fingers are twitching for the blaster by his pillow. Anakin’s hand lashes out and snatches his wrist against the bedsheets, surely moving faster than is natural and, notably, for the first time in probably six hours, pinning him with such a deeply terrified and pleading gaze that Rex vows never to even joke about such a thing again.

He still has his General to look out for, after all. To live for. Will always, if he gets his way and does his job. His Anakin, currently shuffling into Rex’s willing embrace to curl against his chest and sob tears he can no longer give. 

His Anakin, his chosen. The one he refuses to fail as he failed Padmé. The one he has dedicated his life, his entire being to, and will continue to do so as long as he lives.

Even if it means he has to live to see it through.

* * *

“I hate this planet,” Anakin murmurs on another day, one when they’ve finally persuaded each other out of bed and into the ’fresher and then outside to scavenge food. Rex carefully puts his empty polystyro box on the table and watches him finish another mouthful of grain from his seat on the bed. 

He scowls and waves his fork in the air as he thinks. “It just… it reeks. It reeks of pain, and suffering, and illness and corruption, and it’s—”

His face crumples, and Rex has to stop himself reaching out to let him finish. Artoo swivels his head at Anakin’s knee and bleeps sadly.

“Even before, there wouldn’t have been enough of us in the whole galaxy to do much of anything about it.”

Us. The Jedi. 

Anakin prods at his leftovers, disinterested, and the words are out of his mouth before Rex can really think about them.

“Can you teach me how to meditate?”

If Anakin sees through the ruse, all Rex gets is a wry smile for it and a light sigh of sadness released into the Force. “Of course I can,” he says, and sets aside his uneaten food. He holds out a hand and Rex goes easily, folding to his knees on the bed in an effort to copy his position. “Just follow my lead, okay?”

* * *

They cover the recognisable scar over Anakin’s right eye, but leave the new ones crossing the cut of his jaw to show. He’s earnt them fair and square on their adventures, in getting away from Nar Shaddaa and into space that’s simultaneously more and less hostile, taking down bounty hunters and droids and protecting innocents wherever the Force takes them. Once or twice they even manage to enable a few slave uprisings, destroying all their detonators and battering down the doors of palaces with the power of their own fists and righteous fury. The trail of dead slavers they leave in their wake is the last thing from subtle, but neither of them could be more proud (or bring themselves to have a single care for something like subtlety—not in the face of  _ that). _

In his hair, falling from just above his right temple, are two small braids. They’re swept up into his ponytail with the rest of his curls most of the time, sometimes hidden, sometimes on display, but Rex knows what they are. What they mean. Knows the identity that the orange and blue threads worked into the first are supposed to represent. Understands that while the red and yellow in the second could be any of a fleet’s thousands, they are there for one man and one man only. 

Rex has a tattoo on the round of his left shoulder in bright, 501st blue. It boasts his jaig eyes, his old and faithful friends, bracketed between several bands of geometric lines that part in even breaks for smaller symbols. A number, a diamond, a teardrop, an eight-pointed star shot through with red. A golden-orange trident sits nearly camouflaged by his skin beneath it. Theoretically it’s simplistic, vague and iconographic, but in practise is a risk Rex knows too well to have taken but had done so anyway. The decision came with no little approval from his loving boyfriend, for whom he lets his facial hair grow into scruff, kept neat and never too long just so he won’t have to hear the complaints of wasting bacta on beard burn in inconvenient places.

The third, most important part of their beings, is tattooed around the bases of both of their ring fingers. Small, dark wavy lines, nothing flashy or rich and once carved painstakingly by a nine-year-old hand into a soft, bleached token of Japor wood, curled around a crown fit for either king or queen. 

In their case, of course, it fits both.

They’re still on the run from the Empire, tugging up the hoods on their cloaks every time they pass another wanted holo on the side of whatever tapcaf each new town has to offer. The tiny freighter they buy on Kijimi to escape a tail of Imperial hunting squads finds them their first stable bed to sleep in, often curling together with half an eye open at all hours of the cycle. They hop from planet to moon to asteroid, take a stint smuggling low-rate goods for sponsored passage across the galaxy, pose as mechanics and mercenaries and teachers and heavy-lifters, just to get by. 

But in all his years of fighting on the front lines, Canto Bight might just be the worst place he’s ever visited.

It’s beautiful, filled with life and delicate architecture and the best and latest tech. Flowering plants and topiaries are fashioned into fascinating attractions, borders and gardens, draped over the balconies of villas and shimmering casinos. Sentients of all species, languages and cultures are dolled up to the nines when they walk arm-in-arm down the decadently modelled streets.

Rex hates it.

He hates that behind every high-class establishment is a wealth of slavery and blood spilled and forgotten. He hates that the one-percent of the galaxy tread so carelessly over the lives of the millions they keep under lock and key. He hates the pain that all of this beauty blooms from, curling vines of torture and depersonalisation that choke the air with oversweet perfume.

Not even he and Anakin have escaped the scorn of the rich and famous, despite the sizable salary Ani’s raking in as a temporary mechanic in the spaceport. They’ve been here a week, just long enough to resupply after the job that brought them here and take a pause to stretch their legs. At least, Rex thinks to himself, that not every bar around is as pretentiously affluent as the ones that sit and lord above the city.

“I hate this place,” he says as he takes a drink of the same fluorescent orange stuff they’ve spent the last several days smuggling across the planet. “Cantonica. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.”

“Good thing we’re leaving tomorrow then,” Anakin says. One of his long and battered index fingers swirls around a knot in the grain of the real wood table between them in this sheltered corner. He’s wearing Rex’s green-brown leather jacket, the one with too many patches by now, and the shirt he has on exposes just enough of his collar to make Rex want with a familiar and ever-welcomed warmth.

“Who d’you think’s tipped them off this time?”

“Same guy who hired us on Florrum, no doubt.” 

A serving droid teeters over and places two frosted shot glasses of something clear on the table. Rex follows Anakin’s gaze over to the two Trandoshan spice runners a few tables away. He raises an eyebrow when Anakin, who grins and raises the glass to them in toast before knocking it back, slams the empty glass on the table and makes an appreciative noise. Rex snorts and nods to their benefactors and copies him. 

Well, he can at least appreciate good taste.

“Florrum’s close enough,” Anakin continues as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “No reason they couldn’t have run the job themselves. If they want the Imp bounty, sending us into the crook of the sector isn’t such a bad idea. Everyone knows Tarkin’s been wanting a reason to come storm the corporates anyway.”

“Tarkin can eat a blaster bolt,” Rex grumbles. In the wake of their gifted shots, the orange concoction is a darn sight more tart. He grimaces and washes it around his mouth, trying to put all thought of Tarkin and his fake pet Sith out of mind. That was supposed to have been  _ Anakin. _

Soft lounge music plays from speakers overhead as they sit and take in the goings-on around them. Live bands are reserved primarily for the bigger and better businesses, he supposes, but they’re probably better off for it. It would only give him a headache anyway.

“Do you want to get married?” Anakin asks abruptly.

Rex looks at him. He looks at Anakin, and it’s like a punch to the gut. He glows stunning under the dim mood lighting, a halo of bronze and power, and it makes Rex’s heart kick just like it did in those first days, even after so long with nothing but each other. He takes in every bit of him, thinks of everything he could have so easily lost, hears the  _ crack _ that had split through his skull that night that feels somehow like both yesterday and a long, long time ago, and sets his drink carefully down on the bar.

“Yeah,” he says, forcing his voice to a level of casual he certainly doesn’t feel. “Sure. Married. Why not.”

* * *

The ceremony, if Rex can call it that, was probably the strangest thing he’s ever been privy to,  _ let alone _ a part of. Fives and Hardcase would have loved it.

They’d still been in their spacer clothes, not particularly neat and a little bit singed, with Anakin grinning from ear to ear and unable to stand still. Rex’s palms had gone clammy in Anakin’s on their walk over, though neither had been of the mind to mention it. The officiant had waved away his apologies for the late notice of the appointment, though, not that Rex had really paid attention—the bright and shimmery costume (supposedly one of Alderaan’s most famous singers, Anakin tells him) was rather distracting after all. 

“Tell me this is all just a very strange dream and I’ll wake up in the morning none the wiser,” Rex had murmured as the energetic Nautolan had performed a number of strange, ritualistic customs on the stand between them.

Anakin had laughed, quietly but delightedly, and said, “I’m not going to mind trick your memory, if that’s what you’re asking for.”

Rex had smiled and clung to his hand.

It was after they said both old Republic vows and Mandalorian with joy and exhilaration that Anakin had pulled a small, velvety pouch from his inside pocket and tipped from it a pair of silvery-blue rings that Rex had never seen before.

Made of twined threads of hyperdrive-grade solder, each formed an incomplete circle, like two ends of a jump ring pushed too far past each other and bent ever so slightly outwards. Rex had been helpless to look away from his husband’s (his  _ husband’s) _ soft, beaming smile as he slid the ring over his finger—it had only been when he broke the gaze to return the favour that he’d seen it. 

The bands were following the centre of the vines of their tattoos, an iron core to the charms of protection and love. Each curled end split apart before the crown that sits front and centre, framing it, cradling it with its own security, and the burning behind Rex’s eyes that he’d managed to keep at bay had threatened to spill over all at once. 

“Ni kartayli gar darasuum,” he had said, choked.

“Ni kartayli gar darasuum,” Anakin had replied. The tears had glistened beautifully in his eyes before they fell.

They had signed and filed their marriage certificates under their real names. It was risky,  _ stars _ was it risky, but the great, radiating joy of his new riduur makes everything seem worth it regardless. They just had to hope no Imps were tasked with monitoring the channels for Jedi elopements lately.

It’s the holo of the both of them standing either side of the officiant with flutes of sparkling wine that Rex is staring at now, wandering up the ramp of their freighter with a bag of supplies and half an open protein bar. He doesn’t know for sure what planet they’re on; Anakin had announced a detour and then failed to tell him  _ where, _ exactly, but Rex trusts him. And if what he remembers from certain mission reports is correct, he can give a pretty good guess. 

Which probably means he shouldn’t be so surprised now.

If he’d been paying less attention to where he was going, too used to the familiar clicks and scrapes of metal when Ani digs into his crates of tinkering parts, he would have missed him entirely and kept on walking. As it is, Rex pauses mid-chew at the entrance to the cargo hold and looks up from the photo on his data pad. There’s a teenager sitting in his husband’s usual corner, already wrist-deep into rewiring an old service droid, with his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth. The boy is young, pale, with a rat’s nest of brown hair and patched, worn clothes that have Rex’s fingers itching to mend. Artoo is beside him, whistling softly and dragging parts together with his little claws. Both of them perk up the moment they hear Rex’s boots on the floor panelling—the child grins and waves at him with a small screwdriver.

“You’re back!” he says as if he has all his life, and then goes happily back to his work, leaving Rex blinking at him in the cabin lighting.

“You, uh,” Rex clears his throat. “You good down here, kid?”

“Great, actually,” he chirps. “Anakin’s in the cockpit if you’re looking for him.”

Rex watches for a moment longer before shrugging and finishing off his protein bar. “Yeah, thanks.”

Anakin is, as promised, tinkering in the cockpit. Rex kicks his boot where his legs stick out from under the dashboard and drops his bag on one of the passenger crew seats. Anakin grunts and kicks back.

“Why is there a child on the ship?” Rex asks.

There’s a slip of metal on metal and a quiet curse before Anakin slides out to face him. “His name is Jaybo, and he helped Obi-Wan and I find that cure when you were down with the Shadow Virus,” he says, all false-sweet. “We’re not too far off course, and when I saw the map I couldn’t just pass without checking if he’s still here. I said we could take him with us to help find somewhere he can make a life for himself.”

Rex watches his husband blankly, quietly incredulous, and not for one  _ second _ believing that things will go anything like how he seems to think.

“Sure,” he says instead of any of that, and begins calculating how much extra it’s going to cost them to keep a teenager on top of their usual two-person-one-droid maintenance. The thought hurls him without warning into those blurry, tumultuous memories of Ahsoka’s first landing with the 501st; if he’d been moving he’s sure he would have staggered. 

Rex has provided for a young Force-sensitive teenager before. What’s another, Force-normal, in the face of that?

“When I said I’d raise warriors with you, I didn’t expect it would be so soon,” he jokes. Anakin smacks his knee on the underside of the copilot’s seat when he jerks to sit upright. “Then again, I thought we’d already filled that requirement, a Togruta and several hundred thousand men between us.”

When he looks back at his husband’s face he finds a familiar sheepish expression turned on him, tinged with awe and adoration, and can do nothing to keep himself from bending down to kiss him soundly. Anakin smiles and sighs into it.

“Any news on our lead?” he asks when Rex pulls back.

Rex grimaces. “Not so as you’d notice. There isn’t exactly much to go on.”

“We’ve done better with worse.” Anakin smiles softly and brushes his thumb over Rex’s cheek. “We’ll find out what happened, Rex. We owe them this.”

“Yeah,” Rex says. “We do.”

He ambles through the ship’s pre-flight prep as Anakin puts the controls back together, checks on Jaybo and Artoo, and stores their supplies. When the sublight engines rumble to life the cockpit finds all four of them gathered there, strapped in and antsy with the expectation of hyperspace travel. The stars grow clearer, closer, brighter, and eventually begin to streak across the viewport in an endless adamantine rain.

Their people are out there, Rex thinks to himself. Somewhere, someone is out there the same as they are, and one day, they’ll be together again. For now, though, they’ll follow whatever whisper they can get their hands on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much to the rexwalker discord, whose ideas and inspiration for our space vegas wedding were priceless. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite fit Mace Windu, Yoda and Obi-Wan all crashing the wedding where the officiant's dressed as a shoddy Obi-Wan rendition into the vibe I was going for (or the continuity) but I would have loved to have it all the same.
> 
> Rex and Anakin's motto, via Ahsoka: be gay, do a little crime, but not too much crime

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry with me about these guys over on [tumblr!](https://silverxsakura.tumblr.com/)


End file.
